CHAPTER XXIII
Hebrew Literature
Agnes M. Lawson
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The Colorado College of Divine
Science
Denver, 1920.
Besides the
historic and prophetic portions of the
Old Testament, there is a varied
literature of allegories, love, patriotic
and satirical romances, essays, dramas
and poems. The poetic mind of the Hebrew
has long been recognized. To our western
and sometimes prosaic minds the symbols
at times seem fulsome and exaggerated,
yet in the main we see that by the beauty
of their expression a graciousness is
placed upon ordinary incidents and that
there are no commonplaces to the soul
that sees life through the glory of
spiritual interpretation. When we can
elevate and glorify all the natural
duties and varied relationships of life,
we are getting most out of it and are
transmuting material dross to spiritual
beauty by a divine alchemy.
The Hebrew,
denied the outlet of the stage, utilizes
his intense dramatic power in
spiritualized dramas impossible to stage.
The modern arrangement of the Bible
enables us to get his effects in a manner
impossible to gain from the authorized
versions. “The true form of the
literary work must be presented to the
eye. At present the effusion of the
poetmaster in a corner of a provincial
Journal is printed with more
discrimination of poetic form than the
masterpieces of the Bible.”
(Moulton.) The stage of the Hebrew
dramatist is Heaven and earth; the
dramatis-personae, God, Man,
Satan, Wisdom and Voices of mystical
import; the accessories, the elements and
natural phenomena, not simulated but
real.
The
“Psalms” are poems in
which the soul of man stands revealed.
They are the history of the soul piqued
to one object, that of finding God. They
are the expression of the soul in all its
moods “from pompous ritual and
national paean down to the cry of the
solitary soul in the dark.” They
are the march of the soul from the
isolation of sense outsight to the unity
of the soul insight; in them we find its
unrest when out of touch, its supreme
faith and joy when on the mountain top of
spiritual vision where it feels
underneath it the Everlasting Arms.
The first
romance of length enough to be a book
in itself is "Ruth,” an idyl
of the time of the Judges, but written
much later, possibly after Ezra had
prohibited foreign marriages. It is a
charming story of the love of a foreign
woman, a Moabitess, for her
mother-in-law. In it we have a series of
pictures of the customs of that day. It
is through love for each other, of woman
for woman, of man for man, and of man and
woman that we feel most directly the rays
of the Over Love that unites us in one
human family. Simplicity, sincerity and
love are the characteristics of the book
of Ruth; it deserves its place in our
sacred books, for it casts its spell over
us and makes us feel that the spring-time
of life will never wane.
"Esther” is a story of the
exile told with dramatic power. It is the
one book in the Bible in which the word
God does not appear. It must have some
historic basis, though scholars have been
unable to trace it. It was held in great
regard by the Jews, called “the
Roll” and read annually at the
feast of Purim. It is a story of
patriotism, in which a woman matches
triumphantly her resources, her wit,
beauty and charm against the villain who
would annihilate her race.
"Jonah,” called by Lyman
Abbott “A Satirical Romance,”
brings to us a lesson we may all well
heed. It is a story of Nineveh, written
several centuries after its fall. There
is no historic basis for either the
character of Jonah, or the conversion of
the Ninevites. What this writer endeavors
to convey is that God cares for our
enemies just as much as he cares for us.
The Hebrew felt that the Ninevites who
had overthrown the Northern kingdom were
outside of the pale of Jehovah’s
love; but the horizon of the Hebrew mind
is broadening, this writer sees God as
the God of the whole earth, and all
peoples as God’s people.
The unknown
author of “Jonah” did for the
nation’s narrow concept of God what
Cervantes did with the ridiculous
excesses of Spanish chivalry, laughs it
away. Jonah, a prophet, is commanded by
Jehovah to go to Nineveh and save that
pagan City. Jonah is a loyal Hebrew, the
Ninevites are the enemies of his nation,
so he determines that he will not save
them. He takes a ship which sails west,
the opposite direction to Nineveh, but
sailing in an opposite direction cannot
thwart the purposes of Jehovah who owns
the sea as well as the land. He sends a
storm which well nigh wrecks the ship and
Jonah must confess that it is he that is
remiss. The heathen mariners are most
reluctant to throw him overboard, a
lesson wholesome for a man of
Jonah’s type, the heathen are
merciful.
Jonah
arrives at his destination; it matters
not how, this author merely wishes to
assert a truth given in our Text Book,
“Man is either driven or drawn to
his final destiny.” Jonah preaches
to the Ninevites and they repent. He
sulks over it, angry because God is
merciful. Jehovah does not condemn Jonah
for that, but with the patient love of a
father for a wayward child endeavors to
make him see the larger love. He makes a
gourd to grow and under its shade Jonah
finds shelter from the blazing rays of
the sun. Jonah loved the gourd, but
Jehovah prepared a worm which destroyed
it during the night. “And it came
to pass, when the sun arose, that God
prepared a sultry east wind; and the sun
beat upon the head of Jonah, that he
fainted, and requested for himself that
he might die, and said, It is better for
me to die than to live. And God said to
Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for
the gourd? And he said, I do well to be
angry even unto death. And the Lord said,
Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the
which thou hast not labored, neither
madest it grow; which came up in a night,
and perished in a night; and shouldst not
I have pity on Nineveh, that great city;
wherein are more than six-score thousand
persons that cannot discern between their
right hand and their left hand; and also
much cattle?”
God receives
no answer from Jonah; he is the type of
mind at which this author aimed his
shaft, the orthodox Jew. God has no
favorite nation nor individuals; all are
his children. A wonderful lesson and
artistically told, the universality of
the Infinite Love.
The
Song of
Songs is a love drama, but
one into which a real spiritual meaning
can be read. In each individual choice
there is a larger side of universal
significance. A Shulamite maiden is loved
by a man of her own class, a peasant.
King Solomon (chosen as the hero because
he represented the apex of worldly power
to the Hebrew) sees the maiden and would
add this beautiful brunette (“I am
black--but comely”) to his harem.
He woos her and his court women assist as
the chorus. All the intrigue of
worldliness, all the lure of
sensuousness, all the blandishments of
wealth are used to decoy her. It all
falls on ears, eyes and heart filled with
love that cannot be deflected from its
object, therefore she is immune from
temptation.
She is
carried to Jerusalem into the royal
palace and shown all of its grandeur and
wealth. But in her dreams she wanders
away through the streets seeking him whom
her soul loves. Then comes the climax,
she finds and is reunited to her lover.
The steadfast love of a true woman is the
best symbol of the soul whose mind is
stayed on God. The soul stands between
the true lover, God, and the false
seducer, worldliness; when the love is so
fixed on God that it can hear no
other voice it is established and
therefore free.
The
Wisdom Literature differs from the
prophetic; one is based on Divine
revelation, the other arriving at
essentially the same conclusion is based
on observation. Wisdom literature is the
philosophy of the Hebrew, a philosophy
based on God and the inevitable judgments
of God not in some future life but here
and now. Wisdom literature includes
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiasticus
and the Wisdom of Solomon. The latter two
books are Apocryphal, therefore not
found in the authorized version.
“The principle underlying Wisdom
literature and giving it its unity may be
described by a single word, Observation.
The prophet rests his message on an
immediate Divine revelation; the wise men
claimed only to have observed life.
Modern Science is not more faithful to
its root idea of examining details and
grouping results than is the wisdom of
the Bible to its principle of analytical
observation.” (Moulton.)
Job is the
most stupendous drama that has ever been
written. “The masterpiece of
the human mind,” Victor Hugo calls
it. It answers the query which every
student asks, as soon as he hears the
principle of Omnipresence enunciated.
“If God be all, where then did evil
come from?” And the answer is that
in the process of life’s unfoldment
in consciousness, man must stand in
unwavering faith, clinging steadfastly to
his principle until all the shafts of
mortality are exhausted and the soul can
stand in undisturbed serenity and not be
deflected by any outward appearance.
No evil is
evil to the soul that overcomes it, it is
only evil as it overcomes us. Otherwise
it has been a beneficent development of
consciousness and power. The Book of Job
contradicts the conception that trials
are punishment for sin, but enunciates
them as opportunities for spiritual
initiation. Satan tells us his origin,
and to know the origin of anything is to
have the mastery of it. God does not know
him, therefore he is not of God’s
Creation. “Now, there was a day
when the sons of God came to present
themselves before the Lord, and the
Adversary came also among them. And the
Lord said unto the Adversary, Whence
comest thou? Then the Adversary answered
the Lord and said, From going to and fro
in the earth, and from walking up and
down in it.” The Adversary is
something that exists only in human
belief; it actually is nothing but what
we have not worked out. A great modern
prophet says, “All the good the
human mind knows is negative.”
Job’s early possessions of health,
wealth and friends were negative; that
is, they were based on external beliefs
in what he possessed. Possession is never
an external hold of anything; it is an
interior consciousness of eternal
Reality. Evil then in any guise is only a
vacuum in thought to be filled with the
eternal idea of substance.
Outside of
the historic prophets we must place Joel;
he belongs to no time, but, like
Revelation, gives us the eternal
irreconcilability of good and evil. It is
a continuous dramatic presentation of the
mystic forces of destruction and the
power to stay these forces as we arrive
at the Valley of Decision (Valley of
Jehosaphat). This great poem, under the
symbol of the Locust Plague, reveals the
destructive power of sin, and sin is
indecision. Power is a definite
stand in God’s judgments. What
truer picture can be drawn of a soul or a
nation who is overcome by sin than
this:
"The land is a Garden of Eden before
them,
And behind them a desolate
wilderness.”
The soul
that has yielded to temptation, instead
of overcoming it, is a desolate
wilderness, for the fair flowers of
spiritual accomplishment cannot grow in
it.
Of this work
Professor Moulton says, “The
movement of the poem is the beautiful
movement of a regular arch, with the
turning point in the center, while every
stage in the rise of the action has its
counterpoint in the fall.” First,
Desolation and Mourning; second, Judgment
Advancing; third, Repentance; then the
top and the turn, Relief and Restoration;
fifth, Israel Repentant; sixth, Valley of
Decision; seventh, The Holy Mountain of
Eternal Peace. Thus we trace the steps
the soul takes as it turns from mortal
beliefs (Locust Plague) and comes to
God’s judgments, spiritual Reality.
And the gracious promise abides, “I
will restore to you the years that the
locust hath eaten.” To the
repentant soul who turns to God’s
judgment there is no loss, all is
restored.
The later
books of Jewish literature show a
decidedly Grecian influence. This is most
pronounced in the Apocryphal Wisdom
books. The Wisdom of Solomon is so
largely Grecian that it uses the
phraseology of Greek philosophy and it
enumerates the four cardinal virtues of
Plato specifically. The contribution of
the East is the infinite nature of God;
that of the West unconquerable man,
God’s own son. Emerson claims that
the East and the West met in the mind of
Plato; if this is true of the Grecian
philosopher it is still more true of the
universal consciousness of Jesus. He saw
the infinite God and man’s infinite
capacity to comprehend Him.
"Daniel” was written at a
crucial point of Jewish history. The
nation since the time of Alexander the
Great had been under Grecian kings. In
the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes (176-164
B.C.), this monarch persecuted the Jews
with great severity because of their
resistance to the introduction of Grecian
gods. The heroic Maccabees successfully
resisted him, and the Jews gained eighty
years of independence; then they came
under the Roman Empire.
During the
persecution of Antiochus, the Jews needed
a stimulus and this was given in the
historic romance of Daniel. “The
Abomination of Desolation” refers
to the erection of the Greek god Zeus in
the temple of Jerusalem and the order
given the Jews by the king to worship it.
Many suffered martyrdom for their faith
and the book of Daniel, with a hero
absolutely true to Jehovah when in exile
and under a foreign king, must have been
a powerful encouragement to an oppressed
people.
It is
interesting and inspiring to see that
this writer believed in the ability of
man to read all mysteries; also his
perception that men true to the highest
could not be burned in fire and that the
lions could be subdued by a power which
they recognized as God. A spiritualized
body would be immune in the fire and to
one filled with love all nature would be
subservient.
Jesus,
foreseeing the fall of Jerusalem in 70
A.D. and an inner experience which
befalls every soul as it turns from the
concept of a material life to the
spiritual, quotes from the book of
Daniel, “But when ye see the
Abomination of Desolation, spoken by
Daniel the prophet, standing where it
ought not (let him that readeth
understand), then let them that be in
Judea flee to the mountains.”
Judaism and its temple were destroyed
because with the advent of Christianity
they were outgrown and the old form could
not contain the new wine whose
fermentation changed the history of the
world.
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